


A World Alone

by baneschild



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Future, Keith (Voltron) has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, M/M, Short One Shot, True Love, klangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:00:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baneschild/pseuds/baneschild
Summary: Three years could be a lifetime. It could be, but it isn't.Parties aren't fun anymore, for Keith or for Lance, yet somehow, they both ended up at the same one.Three years is a long time. Three years without love is a long time, too.





	A World Alone

   Thumping music sounded like Keith's own heartbeat, fast, erratic, stuck in the base of his throat. What was he doing there? Those people weren't his friends. None of them were.  
   Someone stumbled into him, someone with a drink in their hands, a drink that gushed out of its red plastic cup and down the front of his sweater. He looked up at the person in front of him, teeth bared, ready to give them a mouthful of obscenities. A rush went through him, down his spine, cold like the liquid sticking his clothing to his chest.  
   "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-"  
   Lance paused mid-sentence, the orange glow from the fire behind them illuminating the features of the person in front of him.  
   "Keith?"  
   Everyone around them swam together into one big, motion swirled blur of colours and chatter, laughter and tears. The fire flickered, teasing, mocking.  
   "I haven't seen you in what, like, three years?" Lance offered a smile, genuine, of course.  He widened his arms as if asking for a hug, and Keith shifted uncomfortably, acutely aware of how moist his shirt was. Lance was drunk. Of course he had forgotten.  
   "Yeah, it's been a while," He continued to ignore Lance's embracing gesture until, eventually, his arms fell back to his sides, one hand still holding onto the empty cup. He seemed disappointed.  
   "What have you been up to? I mean, since Voltron, obviously," He laughed shortly, then proceeded to lean up against the truck that Keith had been standing by so to avoid the crowd of people that had flocked to the fire after it had been lit.  
   It frightened him how much Lance had changed, and yet how much he had stayed the same, simultaneously. His eyes were the same blue, but sharper, less wide and innocent and forgiving. There was that scar that broke down through the corner of his lower lip, and his hair was longer, and his hands seemed different, too. Keith didn't like that he could pick out so many differences perfectly without hesitating.  
   "Oh," He glanced over to the fire, at its delicate swaying, and the bodies that jumped and twirled around it, "I've just… I…"  
   In the flames there was a face, twisted and snarling, with colourless eyes and a terrible, terrible mouth that smiled at him in the most evil way possible. From the red abyss, the monster reached out a hand towards him, aiming straight for his heart, to rip it out, to consume it, to give it back to where it came from.  
    _I will have you. I will always have you. I will always have you. I WILL ALWAYS-_  
   Air became sparse, escaping his lungs and leaving him with nothing but emptiness, and painful, shallow breaths. Keith clutched at his chest, feeling his head spin and his body ache. Lance was saying something, he recognised the voice. He was back there again, back in Hell, back where he was dying and they were all dying and Shiro wasn't there. Where was Shiro? He wasn't where he was before, because Keith was there, he was there instead of him, wasn't he?  
   "Keith!" Hands fell onto his shoulders, warm hands, hands that had healed him before, another time ago.  
   With distorted vision he looked cluelessly into the eyes before him. Where was Shiro?  
   "Okay, I think we should get out of here," Lance stared at his unblinking eyes, and his hands that curled up at his chest, trembling, and the scar on his cheek that he remembered felt strange to touch like the small, soft scales of a lizard.  
   He took one of Keith's hands, unfurled it, and placed it inside of his own. It was cold and stiff, familiarly so. They waded through the bustling group, linked together, baby steps, left foot then right, then left again. Lance's car came into sight. He was drunk, he remembered, as if it was something that he could have forgotten. Driving would be worse than staying, that much he knew.  
   Lance pressed the button on his keys to unlock the vehicle, then opened up the passenger side to lower Keith onto the seat. He crossed over the front of the car to move himself into the driver's side, relieved as he closed the door, silence swallowing them both, with the thundering music from outside being diminished to the level of a feint pulse. A pulse that reverberated through the wheels and the metal and the seats and their bodies, close again, strangely.  
   "Shiro?" Keith mumbled, twisting his fingers together at his chest, glancing over at Lance, who suddenly knew what was happening, even in his impaired state.  
   "No, it's Lance," He leaned over the centre console, offering a smile that maybe Keith could recognise. Maybe, years ago.  
   "Lance," He uttered, breathlessly, frowned down into his lap like a child, then all of a sudden snapped back to attention as the quietness lulled him into a sense of safety. Quickly he raised his eyes, wide underneath his dark fringe, hands still trembling slightly.  
   "W...Where am I?" He swivelled around, brushed his hands over the dashboard, peered outside at the party-goers and at that fire, big and red and staring right at him. It wanted to eat him. It wanted to swallow him whole and spit out his bones all black and charred and useless, broken.  
   Soft fingers touched his jaw, turning it away from the window and back to face the other person in the car, the one with blue eyes, and sun freckles, and the scar on his lower lip, but that wasn't there before, was it?  
   "You're okay. You're with me."  
   Keith bit into his lip, after a pause; "I feel like an idiot."  
   "What's new?" Lance jested, aware of the fact that his hand hadn't moved from where it rested underneath Keith's jaw.  
   A silence followed, Keith sighed, his eyes closed, lashes dusting his cheekbones.  
   "Hey, I'm joking," Lance raised an eyebrow, smiling softly, "You're smart- smarter than me."  
   The car even smelled like him, like cinnamon and sunlight, like the beach, like memories, like happiness. Keith dipped his head into Lance's touch. Why did they leave things how they did?  
   His eyes fluttered open.  
   Lance was blushing.  
   "Trying to live," Keith spoke, gently, slowly, his head resting against Lance's hand as if it were holding him up completely, and it was, in that moment, and before then, too.  
   "Wha-"  
   "You asked me what I've been doing for three years," He raised his arms, slightly, extended his fingers, then grazed them against the material of Lance's jacket. It wasn't the same as he was used to, a different colour even, not that musty old green cotton one that he'd find on the couch or in the training room, or anywhere whenever he wanted to be alone.  
   Music still pounded through them, confusing Lance as to whether it was his heartbeat or just the sound of comfort hanging within the car, and in the small space that separated them. What was he supposed to say? To say that he was doing the same, that he was suffering, that he was stuck back there, when he wasn't? A pang of guilt shivered through him, crashing in like a wave. In those three years he had found a way to make himself seem happy, to live, to not just get by. He'd forgotten to think about Keith, and his cold hands, and the scar on his cheek. He'd tried to forget, anyway.  
   "You could have called me, y'know?" He insisted.  
   Keith turned his head so that his lips brushed against Lance's palm as he spoke; "No, I couldn't have."  
   He was telling the truth. That much they both knew. Why did they leave things so open-ended? Why, after three years, did everything that erupted into one quick moment have to come back to haunt them, like the pale ghost of fleeting feelings that weren't there, but weren't absent, either.  
   A moment passed, both of them unmoving, silent, each one watching the other, waiting for them to pull away.  
   "Are you okay?" Somehow, Lance found himself to be sobering. Maybe it was the company.  
   Keith shifted in his seat; "Yeah."  
   Lance moved his fingers, sifting them through Keith's hair; "I think you're lying."  
   Something that sounded like a small laugh came from Keith's mouth. He withdrew his head from where it rested in Lance's palm and sat up, crossing his arms over his chest, ignoring the reflection of flames that licked at the passenger side window.  
   "I'm not… I'm not insane," He twisted the damp material of his sweater between his fingers, a habit he'd gotten into since he'd stopped biting his nails, and before that, pulling out his hair.  
   "I didn't say you were. I don't think you are."  
   His eyes drifted over, sad, yet pleading, like he needed to be reassured, because he didn't believe himself when he said that he was okay. If Lance said that he was okay, then he was okay. If Lance said. Three years wasn't long at all.  
   "I can't sleep without seeing them, yelling for me to help. I can't shower with hot water anymore. I can't look at the stars without crying."  
   Keith tightened his hands into fists; "I go out and I get drunk and then I go home and fall onto the floor and sob until the sun comes up and I can feel safe."  
   He turned to Lance, who had been silent, listening to him speak, listening to him admit with honesty everything that was his fault, in a way.  
   "But I'm okay," His eyes shine with blue moonlight and roaring flames, threatened by tears, "Aren't I?"  
   "I…" Lance's voice quivered, "I shouldn't have left you alone."  
   Keith blinked. That wasn't the answer that he was expecting, nor the one he wanted, but the one that he was glad to receive.  
   "No, you were right to go," That time, he was the one who smiled, sad, forgiving, "We… We were just kids. Dumb kids. We didn't know what we were doing."  
   "Maybe," Lance leaned forwards towards Keith, then rested his head against the edge of his seat, "But maybe we would have worked out. We could have helped each other."  
   The young man across from him smiled again, then reached forwards delicately to pick a piece of lint out of his hair.  
   "I think we'd both go crazy, out there in the desert," Keith drew his hand back, "I didn't want that for you."  
   Lance caught his wrist; "I'd have gone crazy a million times if it meant being with you. You knew that. I told you that."  
   Then, it was Keith who went red, his pulse quickening underneath Lance's thumb.  
   "You didn't mean it-"  
   "I did. Every word."  
   They held each other's gaze, heavy with displaced feelings from years prior. It seemed funny how, after the passage of time, after aimless nights wandering the desert sands not knowing where one was, after a bed shared with countless others, that everything could come back to the same point where it was left, a big circle, round again.  
   "I still think about you."  
   "Now you're the one lying."  
   "I'm not," Lance half-laughed, shaking his head, "It's not easy to forget your first love. And you were, you were my first."  
   First. That was an interesting word. Keith had had many firsts; his first time on a motorcycle, his first time meeting his mother, his first kiss, which was awkward and unbearable and very, very uncomfortable. He couldn't say if he had ever been in love with Lance. He loved Shiro, but Shiro was his brother. Lance wasn't like his brother, he was like… like something else, warm, radiant, annoying, always making his heart flutter all over the place, able to set him on edge and yet quell him, too.  
   Maybe he did love him, after all. Maybe all it needed was a fire, and a panic attack, and a car that smelled like cinnamon for him to realise.  
   Lance released his grip on Keith's wrist, letting it slide free, then brushed his hand through his own hair.  
   "If anyone's an idiot, it's me, thinking I could ever get you to feel the same way."  
   Outside, the party was dying down, people were beginning to stumble home, throw away their bottles, zip up their pants. Those people weren't their friends. Their friends were in space, they were in their head, they existed in lions and in kitchens and in loud erupting laughter.  
   Someone threw a bucket of water onto the fire, releasing the smell of damp, burnt wood, and killing the beast that lived inside of it.  
   The heavy thing that pressed down onto Keith's chest lifted itself and flew away, not towards the stars, but into the ground, deep, where it belonged. He reached forwards, took Lance by the collar, and drew him near so that their noses were touching.  
   "I think we should try again," He whispered against Lance's mouth, untangling his fingers from the material of his shirt and moving them around to the back of his neck, which was warm.  
   He didn't get a reply in words, but in lips, soft and scarred, against his own, wanting, relieved, deprived of three years waiting for love. Hands fell to his waist, holding there, tightly, as if he might float away if he were not being held down. He tucked his other hand behind Lance's head, moving him closer, afraid that the both of them might float away together, somehow. The gearstick of the car got in their way, stabbing Lance in the thigh as he attempted to fall completely into Keith on the passenger side.  
   They pulled apart, staring and unblinking, filled with love and lust and everything they didn't know that they could feel when they were kids and they kissed for the first time, experimenting, awkward, fumbling, and completely unsure.  
   "I love you," Lance sighed, his fingertips tucked into the waist of Keith's jeans, with shuddering breaths, and a whirlwind of emotions.  
Keith struggled to pull air into his lungs, feeling everything all at once, three years, no, more than that, of small touches and short exchanges that meant nothing then, that suddenly meant the world in that moment, in that old car.  
   He let out a small noise, overwhelmed, gripping tighter to the back of Lance's neck.  
   "I love you too."

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, wow, hi! I can't believe I'm actually posting something that I've written. This is like, the scariest moment of my life, hahaha.
> 
> In all seriousness, thank you for reading this silly little thing, even if you didn't really like it. I appreciate every one of you!
> 
> I wrote this in one night, a night filled with sad Lorde songs, so, naturally, the angst came out. Sorry if I made you cry!
> 
> I really enjoy writing, and am always looking to improve, so any bit of feedback would be helpful!
> 
> Oh, and not to make this any more sad, BUT, the implication is that while team Voltron was doing their thing, defending the universe, all of them were killed except for Lance and Keith, who made it back to Earth. The war was stopped, but at what cost?
> 
> Once again, thank you for reading! ♡


End file.
